Thursday, May 17, 2018

It's been National Bike Month... and here is some historical biking across the USA, it was a lot more common than I thought

Mellen C. Plummer in 1925, at the age of 66, rode cross country from Portland,
Maine, to see his brother
in San Francisco, California.

But
that was no big deal because three
years later he set off to ride around
and through the U.S. In 1929, he
changed that plan to simply ride
around the perimeter of the country
and challenged any amateur
rider over the age of 40 to a 12,000-
mile road race.

Quichi Tanaka had been traveling the
world “penniless” by bicycle for eight
years when he reached Boston in
February, 1915. He had spent 10 months
cycling around the U.S. and claimed to have
ridden in 53 countries — more than 93,000
miles.

Phil and Audrey Palaske were on the road
for two years, 1948-50, and planned to
visit every state in the union. They had
severe wanderlust and added Canada and
Mexico to the itinerary

The Mascotts left
their home in
Grand Rapids,
Michigan, in 1912 to
pedal to San Francisco
and return home by
wheel, hoping to set
a record for a tandem
tour. For some unex
-
plained reason, they
turned south at
Denver, headed to
Texas and rode
through the south
and up the East Coast
on their way home,
and the journey took
almost a year and
covered nearly 10,000
miles.